Appreciation: Shelby Foote, man of the South
When Foote ended his talk, most of the passengers left for a tour of the Vicksburg battlefield. But he remained on board for another talk, this one to a group of history students from the city's half-white, half-black school system. "The only thing I would caution you to do," he told the teenagers, "is to look and listen and be part of in an observant way everything that is going on around you, because there is a great deal to teach you. You are very fortunate to live in a place so diverse."
He then recalled his years as a young writer in New York. "I would be in a party sitting around with strangers, and one would say, 'You're from Mississippi, aren't you?' I'd say yes. They'd say, 'What do you people do down there?' I'd say, 'Don't do much.' 'Well, how can you stand it, living like that, away from everything that has meaning and value?' I'd say, 'Well, we do some things.' They'd say, 'Tell me some things you do.' 'Well, who do you think is the best woman writer in the United States? You reckon maybe it's Eudora Welty? She's from Mississippi. Who do you think is the best playwright in the United States? You think maybe it's Tennessee Williams? He's from Mississippi. Who do you think is the best writer in the United States? Think it might be William Faulkner? He's from Mississippi. We do some things down there rather well.'
"They have no notion of us," Foote continued. "They have no notion that they are the provincials and not us. They are the ones who are blocked off from the wide experience. If we could consolidate black and white together, there is nothing we couldn't do."
The next day, when the boat docked in Natchez, my parents came aboard for a cocktail party preceding a B.B. King concert. I introduced my father to Foote, and they discovered that they both worked at the U.S. Gypsum Co. wallboard plant in Greenville in the late 1930s, though not quite at the same time. Daddy had a job in the lab. Shelby lifted and moved logs in the wood yard–work so hot and grueling, he said, that management later had only black men doing it.
"I remember getting a raise," Shelby said. "I was making 25 cents an hour. They raised it 7 cents."
"No," my father said. "They raised it 7½ cents."
Shelby gave my dad a long look. "Earl, you're right," he said. "It was 7½ cents. I forgot that half cent."
But Shelby Foote never forgot that war.
advertisement
